There are things we think (Bruce Levine’s mother is bathed in formaldehyde every night before he props her back into a chair facing her third floor bedroom window), things we think we know (Barry Rozner gets 317 vacation days a year) and things we absolutely know (Chris DeLuca is a complete assbag.)
Why is it that Chicago has the following dopes pretending to be baseball experts?
Levine (ESPN Radio 1000): Used to actually, occasionally get a rumor right. It was probably dumb luck. But lately, every scoop he’s had has been wrong. Not just wrong, but so wrong that a day later he pretends he never said it. Keep cashing those checks, Brucie. You’re doing a great job.
George Ofman (The Score): Is there a creepier man alive? If it’s not the 14 inch forehead, it’s the creepy fake laugh he uses. When you pine for the days of Julie Swieca, you know things are bad.
Phil Rogers (Chicago Tribune): Phil still thinks he’s writing for a newspaper in Texas. If we have to hear about Tim Purpura or Roger Clemens or Toby Harrah one more time there’s going to be a rash of mass suicides.
Bruce Miles (Daily Herald): By all accounts, Bruce is pretty good, but you just know he believes everything Jim Hendry tells him. Bruce has yet to realize that Hendry doesn’t believe half of what Hendry’s saying. Especially if what he’s saying is, “I don’t think I’m going to have another piece of pie.”
Chris DeLuca (Sun-Times): Think about this. If you lined these guys up and had to pick the dumbest one out of an admittedly moronic group, DeLuca would win every time. How did he get this job? Did he win it in a raffle? Have you ever opened the Sun-Times and hoped there’d be a DeLuca column in it so you could find out what’s going on? Guess what, you never will, either.
So that brings us to our half-witted (that might be too kind, actually) buddy.
Today he wrote a pile that had so much steam coming off of it, they had to delay flights at O’Hare.
It’s not the format of the column that is so awful. It’s one of those half-assed, ooh, let’s list some free agents and pick where they’ll end up columns. You know, they’re the ones you write when you’re hung over and don’t want to really do any thinking.
It’s not the format and it’s not even the teams he picks for the guys to end up on. The reality is that nobody knows where any of these punks are going to end up. It’s the logic he uses to get them there. It really defies logic. This guy has an editor, presumably. How dumb is that guy?
He says two sad things about Paul Konerko.
A remarkable October performance drives up his cost, but Konerko is worth it because he will be a popular presence in any clubhouse.
Without doubt, the biggest name on the free-agent market.
First off, if you’re paying a guy to be a great presence in the clubhouse, you have no idea how to put together a baseball team. You know who you pay to be good in the clubhouse regardless of playing ability? Coaches. That’s who. DeLuca says that Konerko’s not worth huge money (he’s right) but apparently since he’s such a great guy, he suddenly is worth huge money?
The fact that Konerko is the biggest name on the market proves that this market sucks.
It’s hard to forget the .254 average and .310 OBP before the All-Star break that nearly prompted the Braves to trade him before the July 31 deadline.
Wait, did anybody go to the trade deadline thinking the Braves were going to dump Rafael Furcal? Probably not. And you know why? Check out the numbers Furcal put up in July.
Batting average: .390 (yes, THREE-ninety– 41 hits in 105 at bats)
On base average: .449 (not .349, FOUR-forty-nine)
Slugging percentage: .590
OPS: 1.040
Yeah, those are the kinds of numbers that will force a team to dump you at the deadline. Nice work, Chris.
On Juan Pierre, DeLuca seriously has the White Sox in pursuit of him. That makes sense. Why not pair a Judy hitting leftfielder who plays lousy defense with no arm with a Judy hitting centerfielder who plays lousy defense with no arm? Genius!
He also says:
He offers a left-handed bat and has the speed (57 stolen bases) to be a capable leadoff hitter, though the Cubs or White Sox would prefer to bat him second.
Bwah? Huh? OK, should the Sox get him (and why would they), I can see hitting Juan behind Scott Podsednik, but who the hell are the Cubs going to hit in front of Pierre? Corey Patterson? Oh, that’d be great. Neifi? Kudos! Even if they sign Furcal, why would you bat the guy who never hits a double behind the guy with extra base power? Even Dusty Baker’s not dumb enough to do this. Wait, he probably is. OK, scratch this one off the list.
He has Brian Giles signing with the Cubs, even though the Cubs have shown no actual interest in the 36 year old right fielder. Don’t you kind of have to plan to offer a guy a contract for him to..you know…sign one?
He puts the Cubs in the Ichiro derby, too. First off, the Mariners aren’t trading him, so as Mel Brooks once wrote, “this is all just jerking off.” The only reason this is in the article is so DeLuca could fill two more column inches.
And he has this to say about Jock Jones:
A left-handed bat who might offer some power. He’s a solid outfielder, but he wouldn’t be much of an upgrade in right over Jeromy Burnitz for the Cubs.
Wouldn’t be “much” of an upgrade over Burnitz? He would be the kind of upgrade that’s worse. You know…a downgrade?
And to think, the man gets paid for this stuff.
Mariotti got his panties in a bunch yesterday over the Olin Kreutz-Fred Miller bout, and took Lovie to task for not punishing Kreutz more. Today, (always a day late) Rick Morrissey sings the same, off-key tune. Look, it’s football. Fights happen all the time. Gee, you think a bunch of guys paid to hit people don’t hit each other once in a while? As far as Olin and Fred lying to Lovie, don’t you think there’s a distinct possibility that Lovie knew the truth and the lie was for the media? Gasp! You don’t think?
Apparently, we can’t expect 37 wins out of the Illini this year. Really?
Fred Miller’s going to play Sunday, and apparently the fight happened at an FBI shooting range. Fred’s lucky all he got was punched.
Scott Skiles said on the Bulls’ pregame Monday that eventually Luol Deng would get back in the starting lineup. Eventually, looks like tonight.
Tim Thomas thinks the Bulls want to trade him. He must be assuming that somebody wants him. By the way, if you own NBA2K6, Thomas is unstoppable. If only that were true in real life.
Ned Colletti a former Cubs PR and then “finance” weasel is the new GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ken Rosenthal on the hire. He says that Theo Epstein has told friends he’d like to get back into baseball next year with the Mariners or Cubs. You also hope that Colletti wasn’t on the side in San Francisco that wanted Dusty gone. It’d be nice to see if Dusty could still be shipped west.
Matt Suhey is staying in the Bronx and Flash Gordon wants three years from the Yankees to keep caddying for Mo Rivera.
Dontrelle Willis might sign a one year deal with the Marlins, or he might got to arbitration and try to break the bank. And you wonder why the Marlins are shopping Delgado and Pierre.
Apparently, Guatemala doesn’t have such a good baseball team.
Thanks to the guys at Deadspin.com, we finish today with a classic from America’s finest news source.
My guess is that the prinicpal drug used by Albert is Metamucil
Metamucil doesn’t work nearly as well as me.
Do you know how many doses of Metamucil you’d need to equal the power of one bowl of Colon Blow?
30,000!
Word is I’m a great clubhouse presence too, bitch. Sign me.
I’m great in the clubhoose too, eh. I clean the toilets and everything. Like, I oughta get big money for that, eh!
Yeah, that’s right. I believe everything Jim Hendry says. Just ask Jim. (Oh, that’s right, you don’t have to deal with the people you call names.) Jim sure liked my question last week about giving $5 million to a backup player like Neifi Perez. He also likes my references to the Cubs’ undervaluing such trivial offensive stats as OBP. Your resident “dope” here also pointed out recently that Jacque Jones’ numbers weren’t much different from those of Jeromy Burnitz, which is to say they weren’t very good. And of all the beat writers and reporters who cover the Cubs, I’d say exactly one of them (this dope, but I’d never call myself an “expert”) has been tough on Dusty Baker.
Got to run. Jim Hendry is calling to tell me what to believe.
Fun site you got here, though.
That was cool.
I never thought Bruce was that angry or insecure.
We should really go away. If we don’t want to read the stuff here, we shouldn’t. If we must, we should stop annoying everyone else with our retarded comments and obnoxious criticisms. Maybe we could just go and open a blogspot account and make our own web pages!
We should really go away. If we don’t want to read the stuff here, we shouldn’t. If we must, we should stop annoying everyone else with our retarded comments and obnoxious criticisms. Maybe we could just go and open a blogspot account and make our own web pages!
What Bruce doesn’t seem to know is that this sentence “By all accounts, Bruce is pretty good, but you just know he believes everything Jim Hendry tells him.”
Is about as close to a compliment as gets thrown out around here.
Anyway, as our favorite Channel 4 co-anchor said to Wes Mantooth, “Try not to lose any more hair over it.”
Ain’t much more hair to lose. Thanks for the “compliment.” I did notice that part of it. And I did say this was a fun site.
I think when they make fun of you here it means they like you. Kind of like 7th grade.
Unless they insinuate you have your dead mother preserved in your home or they run a ticker to keep of track of when you have to leave.
And yes, I’m still bitter that ESPN wouldn’t let me out of my deal to come to the Cubs so I could play here with the lunatics.
Tap tap tap
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tap tap tap
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tap tap tap
Someone’s pining for my return to the air? What are the hours and would I have to live in Durango, IL?
Anybody have “that was really Bruce Miles” on their radar?
Oh, and keep an eye on Pat Gillick in Philadelphia this week. No, really, keep an eye on him, he owes me for a Penthouse Forum he said he was “borrowing.”
Julie, sweetie! Long time, no see. Wanna come over and play hide the World Series ring?
A sure way to get us to appear is to take umbridge with Andy. Make sure you don’t have your own opinion or happen to disagree with the majority here. If you DO have a contrarian view, it should be stifled and not shared with anyone, except on your own blog. If anyone tries to offer their own take that doesn’t fit the Desipio company line (or its subsidiaries or devotees), they should strongly reconsider any thought of posting to an open messageboard. And, above all, you better not post annoymously, or us Police Cops will make sure you are branded a pussyâ€â€or worse, gay.
Aren’t we the same thing?
I look like Scotty Hamilton. I also skate like an angel, as well.
Saying I’m less af a moran than the rest of the writers in town, is like saying I finished 1st in the special olympics.
#15, if #5 and #11 weren’t actually me, it was somebody doing a bloody good impression of me.
It’s “umbrage”. Look it up.
Aren’t we the same thing?
All, I’ll say is that I had the Desipio Police Cops investigate it and they’re pretty sure Hugh Douglas, Matt Stairs, Butt-head, Paul Sullivan, Dave O’Brien, Bruce Levine’s mother, Julie Swieca and Paul Konerko didn’t really post here.
Oh man, the discussion is stuck in one of those loops again…
I’m pretty sure that was actually Bruce Levine’s mother, actually.
D’oh! Yeah, CT, it is “One of those days…” But the Police Cops bring up a good point: it’s treasonous to go against the grain. If Andy had such thin skin and bristled at the thought of people coming here and daring to disagree, he’d turn off the Comments section. Luckily, Andy has thick skin (pasty, but thick). It’s the notion that the Desipio Army shows up en masse when someone wants to pick nits.
(Throwing scarf over shoulder)
And that’s the end of that!
Have I annoyed the lot of you yet? Clearly, that’s what I’m here for.
I sound like one of Apex’s old posts.
Why is there always some crusader on the board that feels the need to put desipiots in their place? If we didn’t all generally agree, we wouldn’t come here. There are disagreements on this board, but this know-it-all b.s. is old. If the only reason you are gonna visit a site is to disagree with the content (or prove a “point”), stay away. This is Dolan’s site, he can write what he wants. Whether we all agree, or not, should be of no consequence to you.
Bruce,
I have a hot lead on a trade, e-mail me and we’ll talk.
Hoops
Well said, Gus.
Actually, my skin is not that pasty. Surprising for somebody as Irish as I am. Must be one of those black Irish.
And as it turns out, that really was Bruce Miles. Now everyone get back to avoiding work.
To continue the discussion from yesterday:
Andy’s interview I had to go through to get my (thankfully for some) occasional column was actually very difficult. I have had some easier tests of knowledge here at the U of I.
Maybe.
Thank you Mr. Vice President, now about those motorcades that always mess with traffic by my house…
:: There are disagreements on this board…
:: Whether we all agree, or not, should be of no consequence to you.
Gus, I think that’s the point. If someone disagrees, he/she should have that option, and be able to voice it here. Yeah, they’ll get flamed, and sometimes that’s warranted (such as claiming Pujols is under age 30, or the Urinal Cake smells fresh, or KD doesn’t need to shave his soul patch), but this is foolish to think someone will just slink away quietly if they have a bee in their bonnet. If they want to squash the bee that is annoying him and annoy the rest of us in the process, so be it. Whining about it is just that: whining.
I like the cut of your jib, Homercles.
True, it just doesn’t ever seem to be done constructively. It seems like whoever does it is trying to start a fight, which takes everyone off topic. Anyway, was that really Bruce Miles?
What’s a jib?
I heard Homercles cares not for beans.
I only care for the Erotic Adventures of Hercules, starring Norman Fell as Zeus.
Johnny Tightlips, what do you care for?
I care for a lot of things…
… but I ain’t sayin’.
Eh, c’mon, Gus… A little fight-starting is OK from time to time.
For you maybe…
Hey Miles, you want to trade beats?
Muhuhuhuhuhahaha!
I have to say that Andy’s paragraph about Bruce Miles was probably the nicest thing he’s ever written about a member of the media.
knock knock…
#29: Thank you.
What will it take for Mariotti to post here?
Somebody to read it to him.
Does anybody have Jon Liecester to Texas for a player to be named on their radar?
Hoops
If Jay posted, he’d probably just be plagarizing me again. Plagarizer.
Yeah, I know I’ve never spelled it right. That’s part of the bit.
Was that really Bruce Miles?
I’ve been traded??? Damn you Hendry.
Hi guys… Do you think maybe I can come back to Chicago and help the grounds crew next season?
Was there really a terred in the punch bowl?
Hey anyone wanna talk salad?
For the Eddie Guerrero comment.
That the journalism student BC will (tend to interrupt his own thoughts to) use a lot of phrases between parenthesis?
Yes (who doesn’t?), now pass the donuts.
What traverses two points.
I am a suicide bomber in training.
Some guy named HoopsCubs says the Cubs are in the race for me. Then he proceeds to name like ten other teams interested as well.
Is awfully fucking annoying.
got salad?
Does anyone have AJ Burnett to a big league team in North America on their radar?
If you want to see what blips are on the Hoops radar, quite obviously On-Hoops.com was launched in an attempt to harness this ever-changing landscape of insider knowledge.
Less credible information is available at On-Moops.com.
Fuck you, Dick Cheney.
Hey, where is dca-hole, I mean dcexile? I am writing a joke and I need the opinion of a bitter, snotty, unemployed, humorless nerd.
Hot stove report? More like a Dutch oven report so far. Good thing my wife balances the checkbook and keeps me away from the Amex. I love to spend money, and not just on bearclaws.
Sure Jim, you probably just spend all your time out getting drunk with your Laser Tag team.
And you’re divorced, Jim.
That’s right, ladies. I’m available and my only move is the Dutch Oven.